Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Expansion

Lightning gets his own place

After the head and neck injury Lightning sustained we did segregate him in the octagonal pen as last blogged. This proved to be a great way to grow him up both safely and keep him close to the hens he would eventually be re-united with.

Our plans were to add on to the octagon pen by adding new panels atop the current ones, matching the paint and adding a floor to make a Chicken high-rise. We would add a half floor similar to the one we have in lightnings cages so there would be two town house layouts for a total of four floors of Chick spaciousness but it has not happened yet.

Instead, the pullets we bought are matured and laying! The girls are 21 weeks old and are starting to lay. We don't know which brown eggs are coming from which hen. but they are laying.

Lightning figures into this as well, we graduated him, moving him from the Bachelor pad to the main pen when he reached 16 weeks. His neck appeared to be as healed as it was going to be so we thought we'd try putting him in with the girls. It went well. There was two challenges to him from the biggest pullets, and he flared up, feigned a strike and then they gave up and he has been there with them since.

We are getting blood spots in the eggs now. We have also set aside 12 eggs under 2 of the mountain hens that were getting broody now that there were more eggs in the boxes. Hatch day is calculated for March 7 though I am not sure we'll get anything but hot eggs on that day. Here's crossing fingers!